[Web4lib] Re: Google Search Appliance and OPACs

[Christopher Barr]

This issue is being resolved in an upcoming release of VuFind.

We have the same issue with a few other pieces of software on our library web site and have made it a priority to reevaluate our naming schemes by May. It is quite a task when you look at the amount of software that runs the typical academic library site, but very important if you want proper placement in the all-mighty Google index.

--chris
________________________________________
From: Edward Spodick [lbspodic at ust.hk]
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 10:02 PM
To: Christopher Barr; web4lib at webjunction.org
Cc: kgs at bluehighways.com; kgs at freerangelibrarian.com
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Re: Google Search Appliance and OPACs

At 4:48 PM -0500 2/8/08, Chris Barr wrote:
>We're working on that expired-link problem too:
>http://vufind.org/demo/Record/695686
>In fact we consider permanent links a major feature of VuFind.

A good thing.  Our III catalog also has permanent links available.

But as someone else alluded to, many ILS systems, including both the III and VuFind implementations, suffer from using a generic TITLE tag in the HEAD of the html - to the title tag, which is used for displaying Google search results, will just be something like the following for every record.
        "Hong Kong University of Science and Technology"
        "Library Resource Finder: Record Holdings"
Not very useful when what the user would want would probably be the title of the item.

The Scriblio implementation does a better job on this aspect, at least in our implementation, with things like
"HKUST Library Catalog » Japanese popular music : culture, authenticity, and power"
as http://catalog.ust.hk/catalog/archives/710731

I am sure VuFind will rapidly include that capability as well - I wish III (and others) would do the same.

So while I do plan to explore the Sitemap method of exposing these permanent links, until that is fixed the results in search engines may not appear too useful.  But at least the III one does have our Library's name for the user to notice.

--
Edward F Spodick, Information Technology Manager
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Library
lbspodic at ust.hk  tel:852-2358-6743 fax:852-2358-1043